In what is becoming a macabre annual ritual,
the Chinese government used the United Nations' International Day Against
Drug Abuse and Illicit Drug Trafficking to dramatize its renewed vigor
in the endless war by executing 59 convicted drug traffickers (http://www.drcnet.org/wol/143.html#chinakillings
and http://www.drcnet.org/wol/143.html#editorial).
Chinese authorities also staged pyrotechnic spectacles, exploding and burning
bales of confiscated drugs before stadiums full of onlookers and broadcasting
the events on the state-owned television networks.

The anti-drug day, observed June 26 each
year by the UN's Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention (UNDCP),
marks the anniversary of the signing of a declaration at the end of the
1987 International Conference on Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking.
That declaration laid the groundwork for the UN to adopt the 1988 Convention
Against the Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychoactive Substances,
the last of three treaties that form the legal backbone of the international
drug prohibition regime.

In most locations where the UNDCP organized
commemorative events, they were less bloodthirsty, smelling more of magical
surrealism. In Colombia, the UN group's web site announced, anti-drug
day would be marked by a cheerleading festival and aerobics marathon, while
in Medellin, the UNDCP would host a conference on amphetamines. Laos
would stage a ceremonial dope burning in That Loung square, near the country's
most important shrine, the Great Sacred Stupa, UNDCP reported, adding that
it was cosponsoring a "music and theater festival with an anti-drug theme"
that was also on the bill. In Afghanistan, thanks to the UNDCP, "[T]here
will be an embroidery competition for women, where participants will be
given cloth, thread and other resources to develop embroidered anti-drug
messages."

But China's anti-drug day festivities,
undertaken independently of the UNDCP, were a rude reminder of the lengths
state authorities go in their efforts to suppress drug use and the drug
traffic. In Kunming, capital of southwestern Yunnan province, thousands
attended a stadium rally where 20 drug traffickers were condemned to death,
according to the Associated Press. Then, officials using remote-control
detonators ignited two tons of heroin placed in metal pans and soaked in
gasoline. That display was broadcast live for the noon national news,
while the condemned were taken to another location and shot in the head,
AP reported.

Chinese executioners were busy across the
land, according to the AP. They executed eight people in the central
city of Wuhan and eight more on Hainan Island, where the downed US spy
plane still lingers. In Fujian province, authorities executed five
Taiwanese citizens for trying to smuggle crystal meth to Taiwan.
But the single largest toll came a day earlier, when 18 heroin traffickers
were executed in southwestern Chonquing, according to a report from Xinhua,
the official Chinese news agency. Scattered executions in various
cities brought the toll to at least 59, AP reported.

UN officials declined to endorse China's
actions. "Drug abuse, drug trafficking are indeed very terrible problems
of our day," UN deputy spokesman Manoel de Almeida e Silva told a New York
press conference. The 1988 convention does provide a legal framework
for waging war against drug trafficking, said the UN spokesman, but "as
far as I am aware the convention does not provide for the application of
the death penalty."

The wave of executions come amidst a months-long
crackdown on violent crime and drug trafficking known as operation "Strike
Hard," which has resulted in more than a thousand executions so far this
year, European Union diplomats in Beijing who monitor the state-run media
told AP. Many more have received death sentences and are awaiting
execution, they said.

Chinese Minister of Public Security Jia
Chunwang told the China Daily the "drug scourge" has brought "social disorder"
to China and that Chinese drug fighters "had spared no effort" in the drug
battle leading up to the UN's anti-drug day.

He said that in the last five months Chinese
anti-drug agencies had arrested 15,000 people on drug charges and had seized
2.2 tons of heroin, 1.2 tons of opium, and 2 tons of methamphetamine.
According to statistics from the Ministry of Public Security, the number
of registered addicts had risen from 148,000 in 1991 to 860,000 last year,
but those figures may seriously underestimate the extent of drug use in
China. The same China Daily news account that reported the figure
for addicts also reported the official Chinese government line that there
were only 23,000 HIV-positive persons in China, most of them infected through
intravenous drug use. But an ABC World News Tonight report on June
27 said China was in denial about the extent of AIDS, quoting sources within
the Chinese Health Ministry as putting the number of HIV-infected people
at at least 600,000, with much of the spread due to infected needles used
in commercial blood-buying centers in the 1980s.

Also on July 27, in a story that drew no
connections, the Washington Post reported that a Chinese physician seeking
political asylum in the US has said in written statements that he participating
in the harvesting of organs from freshly executed prisoners. In documents
given to the post by the Laogai Foundation, funded by expatriate Chinese
human rights activist Harry Wu, Wang Guoqi said he helped remove corneas
and harvest skin from more than 100 executed prisoners. Other doctors
participated as well, he said. Wang was employed by the Tianjin Paramilitary
Police General Brigade Hospital, which sold those organs for enormous profits.

According to Wang, the police hospital
paid off security officials to notify it in advance of multiple executions,
especially during the periodic "Strike Hard" campaigns, then sold organs
such as kidneys to wealthy or well-connected people for up to $15,000 each.
Wang said many prisoners were shot, then immediately placed in ambulances
where their kidneys were removed within two minutes. Wang, a burn
specialist, said he often carved skin from the arms, legs, chest and back
of each corpse. The skin would be used later for burn victims.

"After all extractable tissues and organs
were taken, what remained was an ugly heap of muscles, the blood vessels
still bleeding, or all viscera exposed," he said. "Then the corpse
was handed to the workers at the crematorium."

According to Harry Wu, Chinese law bans
organ removal from condemned criminals unless they, or their families,
volunteer their bodies for medical use. But he told the Post that,
in reality, prisoners or their families are not asked and the process is
highly corrupt.

The US State Department has raised the
subject in its annual human rights report, saying this year that "credible
reports have alleged that organs from some executed prisoners were removed,
sold, and transplanted." Chinese authorities "have confirmed that
executed prisoners are among the sources of organs for transplants but
maintain that consent is required from prisoners or their relatives before
organs are removed," the report added.

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